"ingo" <ing### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
news:Xns9817D1F0C8D51seed7@news.povray.org...
> How to build a house?
>
> Even though I actualy started using POV-Ray for that purpose I never
> actualy did it. Now I have to renovate my house and I'd like to simulate a
> few things, especialy light and shadow and of course the looks.
>
> Now, what is the easiest method, a box per wall? A prism? "brick by
> brick"? Other methods?
>
> Ingo

Hi Ingo,

My suggestion would be to use a prism for the shape of each room, plus a 
prism for the floor and one for the ceiling of each room.
That should give you enough separate shapes for each room to get a 
reasonable level of control over the textures.

If you do your floor plan as a 2D vector graphic in Inkscape you can export 
each room as a POVRay prism.
To do this in Inkscape you can use the Bezier shape to draw the outline of 
your room (Inkscape conveniently tells you the length of the line segment as 
you are drawing it as well as positioning information). Take a copy of the 
shape and name it 'Floor'. Take another copy of the shape and scale it up a 
little, then select this and the original shape at the same time and do a 
'Path', 'Difference'. Name this shape 'Lounge' (make sure this 'wall' is 
thinner than the real wall so that it doesn't intercept the next room 
along). When you've done the same for all your rooms, export as a POVRay 
file and include it in your scene. Scale the floors by -0.1 in Y and the 
rooms (e.g. 'Lounge') by 50 in Y. Take a copy of the Floors, scale by 0.1 
and translate by 50 in Y to get ceilings.

Hey presto. Ten minutes later you've got sophisticated room shapes that you 
can cut holes in for doors, windows, a fireplace etc.
So long as you keep it as a separate include file (and also keep a copy of 
the SVG source file) you can subsequently move the walls and floors around 
on your floor plan in Inkscape and they'll magically move when you export a 
new copy to POVRay (Though you'll need to move any corresponding stuff like 
skirting boards and doorways that you've defined in your scene file).

Hope this idea helps.

p.s. Don't forget to use POVStairs when you get to the hallway 
(http://www.geocities.com/povstairs/)

Regards,
Chris B.

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